Encourage them to start thinking of themselves as “Sendarians”.’
‘Why not do that with a proclamation, your Grace?’
‘I’d rather not make it that formal, Killaneson. My goal here is to
just quietly fade out of sight. If we do this right, a few generations
from now, nobody will even remember the Duchess of Erat.’
Killaneson’s voice had an almost childish note when he said,
‘Please don’t run off and leave us alone, Mommy.’
‘Stop that,’ I chided him.
Then we both laughed.
It was at the end of the thirty-first century that the debacle in the
harbor at Riva took place. The Tolnedrans, convinced that there was
vast hidden wealth on the Isle of the Winds, sent a fleet north
-” to persuade the Rivans to open their gates to do business. The
Rivans weren’t really interested, so they methodically sank the
Tolnedran fleet instead. Things were very tense for a while, but after
the Cherek Ambassador at Tol Honeth advised Ran Borune XXIV
that the alorn kingdoms would demolish Tolnedra in response to
any hostilities directed at the Isle, things settled back down to
normal.
The Honethites succeeded the Borunes in the imperial palace at
Tol Honeth. Say what you will about the Honeths, they are probably
the best administrators of all the great families of the empire, so
things quieted down.
As we moved into the early years of the thirty-second century, I
began to reduce the staff of my manor house on Lake Erat until
there were finally only a few caretakers there. I made arrangements
for the rest of the Killaneson family, and I gradually began to fade
from the memories of the people who had formerly been subject to
me. They called themselves Sendarians now, and I had largely
receded into history books and folk-lore.
I did have to come out of my seclusion at mother’s cottage a few
times, though. In the mid-thirty-second century, the Bear-Cult in
Cherek persuaded King Alreg that Sendaria was a natural extension
of his kingdom, and that Belar, the Alorn God, would be angry if
Cherek failed its religious obligation to annex my former duchy.
once again I was going to have to try to talk some sense into some
thick-headed alorns. After one particularly offensive earl named
Elbrik had stormed ashore and looted Darine, I went falcon and
flew on up to Val alorn to have a few words with the King of
Cherek. I settled onto the battlements of Alreg’s rambling palace
and went on down several flights of stairs to his smokey throne-room.
King Alreg was an enormous man with a great, bushy blond
beard. Despite the fact that there was no real need for it, he wore
a steel helmet and a chain-mail shirt as he lounged, beer tankard in
hand, on his oversized throne. Quite clearly, Alreg considered
himself to be a warrior king.
One of the mailed guards at the door seized my arm as I entered.
‘You’re not supposed to be in here, woman!’ he said roughly to me.
‘Men only in Alreg’s throne-room!’
‘Did you want to keep that hand?’ I asked, pointedly staring at
the offending member.
‘Now, see here, woman -‘ He did let go of my arm, though.
Then he went rolling across the rush-strewn floor as the force of
mY Will struck him full in the chest. I enhanced my voice to make
myself audible over all the drunken babble. ‘Alreg of Cherek!’ I
thundered, and the very walls shook to that overwhelming sound.
The King of Cherek, obviously about half drunk, reeled to his
feet. ‘Who let that woman in here?’ he demanded.
‘I let myself in, Alreg,’ I told him. ‘You and I are going to have
a talk.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Get un-busy right now!’ I strode on down past the smoky
fire-pit in the center of his barn-like throne-room, bowling over any
Cherek warriors who tried to get in my way. Even in his slightly
befuddled state, Alreg realized that something unusual was going
on. I reached the foot of the dais upon which his throne stood
and fixed him with a very unfriendly stare. ‘I see that the seat of
Bear-shoulders has descended to a drunken fool,’ I noted scathingly.
‘How sad. I know he’d be disappointed.’
‘You can’t talk to me that way!’ he blustered.
‘You’re wrong, Alreg. I can talk to you any way I choose. Get
that barbarian Elbrik out of Darine immediately!’
‘You can’t order me around! Who do you think you are?’
But one of the more sober men standing just behind him had gone
very pale. ‘Your Majesty!’ he said to his king in strangled tones,
‘that’s Polgara the Sorceress!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Alreg snapped. ‘There’s no such person!’
‘Look at her, your Majesty! Look at that white streak in her hair!
That’s Polgara, daughter of Holy Belgarath! She can turn you into
a toad if she feels like it!’
‘I don’t believe in any of that nonsense,’ Alreg scoffed.
‘I think you’re about to have a religious conversion, Alreg,’ I told
him.
That ‘turn him into a toad’ business had been floating around for
eons, you know, and most of the time it’s been nothing more than
a tired old joke. What would be the point of doing something like
that? This time, however, the notion had been planted at just the
right moment. I was going to have to do something to Alreg to get
his attention, and, although the sober Cherek noble who’d
recognized me had probably just thrown the expression out at random,
it had planted the idea, and the more I thought about it, the more
the notion appealed to me. For once, an absolute absurdity would
serve my purpose as well or better than anything else.
I wanted to make the entire process visible, so this time I did it
in a slightly different way. Rather than simply injecting Alreg into
the image of a toad, I altered his features one by one. it occurred
to me that I didn’t really need the whole toad – just its head and
feet. I could leave the rest of Alreg intact.
Alreg’s head slowly began to change shape, flattening out until
it had a reptilian cast. His eyes were now at the top of his head,
and they began to bulge upward. Since his eyes were already
bulging anyway, that part wasn’t too hard. Then I dissolved his
be–and extended the corners of his mouth.
‘No!’ It came out of that lipless mouth in kind of a squeaky croak.
I’d decided that it might be useful if he could still talk. Then I altered
his hands and feet into the flipper-like appendages of the amphibian.
I slightly modified his hips, shoulders, knees, and elbows, and with
shrill, pathetic croaks, the King of Cherek sank down into that
frog
like crouch on the seat of his throne. Then I added the warts.
I hadn’t altered Alreg’s size, nor tampered in any way with his
clothing, so there was a man-sized toad in a mail-shirt and with a
sword belted at its thick waist crouched bug-eyed on the royal
throne, croaking in a shrill kind of panic.
The entire process had taken several minutes, and since Alreg’s
throne stood upon a dais, it had been visible to every Cherek, drunk
or sober, in the entire hall.
I sensed one of the bearded Chereks behind me reaching for his
sword. When he grasped what he thought was his sword-hilt,
though, he wrapped his hand firmly about the head and neck of a
large, angry snake instead. ‘Don’t do that any more,’ I told him,
without bothering to look around. ‘You’d better tell your retainers
here to behave themselves, Alreg,’ I suggested to the enthroned
toad. ‘That’s unless you have replacements handy. My father doesn’t
want me to kill people, but I think I can get around that. I’ll just
bury them without bothering to kill them first. They’ll probably die
of natural causes – after a while so father won’t have any cause
for complaint, now will he?’
‘All right!’ the warty creature on the throne of Cherek squealed.
‘I’ll do anything you say! Please, Polgara! Please! Change me back!’
‘Are you sure, Alreg?’ I asked pleasantly. ‘You look rather
imposing this way. Think of how proud it’ll make all your warriors
to tell the entire world that they’re ruled by a toad. Besides, you’ve
got all these lazy, bearded louts lounging around drinking beer. You
could put them all to work catching flies for you to eat. Wouldn’t a
nice fat fly taste delicious about now?’
I think his mind started to slip about then, because the squalling
intensified and he bounded off his throne and began to hop around
in circles.
I changed him back to his own form with a single thought, but
he was evidently not aware of it because he continued to hop and
squeal. His warriors all shrank back from him with looks of panic